Event Around the 2025 NBA Playoff Madness!

Context. I like Amen, but he was never going to be a go-to option on offense. Scoot still has the opportunity. He at times looked like the best player on the floor this season. He's also younger. It's no secret that I like Amen, but we're trying to find top options to carry the offense. I don't think anyone is fooling themselves that Amen can ever be that. Scoot has that potential. Whether or not he gets there, we'll see more next season.

The superstar label was always silly for Amen.

 

I haven't seen anything from Scoot to make me think he could carry a successful nba offense. Dame yes, Scoot no. I just don't think he's got the overall Dame-Rose-Westbrook-Morant-Mitchell talent. He can certainly be a very solid PG who can have strong scoring games; but he absolutely needs to reduce his turnovers

 

I’m not going to directly counter your main thesis but I will point out that he did drop his turnovers this season from 3.4 last year to 2.7 this year.

 

Definitely not clearly better at shooting..... or passing. Or FTA. Or FT%.

Scoot is a point guard. He's better at point guard things. Amen is clearly not a point guard. He's better at wing things. The Blazers don't exactly need another wing, so to me Amen hasn't clearly set himself apart. There's just a ton of hype around him right now... but he still can't shoot.

 

Yeah, you've made your opinion pretty clear. I'd say in that three month stretch he was pretty phenomenal. I don't mean to cherry pick, but if he can be that, there's no reason he can't be a star or top option on offense. He's already figured out his shooting this early into his career. No reason to think he can't improve other parts of his game.

 

Wemby is perfectly healthy.

 

I don't think they can beat the Clippers. If they move on, I won't count them out against OKC.

 

If he spends this summer working on going from his left you sure will. He has already improved his 3 point shot from 32% to 35 % in one year. His turnover ratio is down and his overall understanding of the game has increased exponentially. He literally had a 40 point game in January. He's had multiple 30 point games.

I absolutely cannot believe the kind of expectations people have poured on this kid. Next year is Scoots breakout year is what I'm thinking.

 

The Thunder are really good no question but I still want to see them make it through a tough series.

 

that's true. But his assists dropped from 5.4 to 5.1. Also, his minutes dropped from 28.5 to 26.7; and his FGA dropped from 12.9 to 10.4.

those trends show up in per 100-possesions stats as well. His turnovers dropped from 5.9 to 4.9. Assists barely dropped from 9.4 to 9.3. But his FGA dropped from 22.3 to 18.9. About a 17% drop in turnovers and a 15% drop in FGA

his turnover % dropped from 19.3% to 18.6%. His assist % dropped from 29.9% to 28.1%. And his usage rate dropped from 26.5% to 22.5%. In other words, his usage rate dropped by 15.1% but his turnover rate only dropped by 3.6%. That's not really an improvement, at least not by proportions.

also, Scoot's assisted FG Rate last season was 36.8%. It increased to 44.2% this season. So, not only did his FGA/100-possessions drop by 15%, he was assisted on 20% more of his FG's. Meaning that his 'opportunity window' for turnovers on his FGA's dropped significantly

while he did reduce turnovers, I think most of that reduction can be tracked to significantly lower usage rate and s significantly lower rate of unassisted FGA's. He just wasn't as featured in the offense this season as he was last season. Maybe that's a good thing; I don't know. He did have a major improvement in assist/turnover rate. Last season is was 1.58; this season it was 1.89. That might be the most revealing sign of improvement

but 1.89 is not good for a PG. He ranked 229th in that stat, but obviously, a many of the players ranked above him didn't have the responsibility of running an offense. Still, he needs to make anouther big improvement next season

 

Guys, if you watch the replay of Aaron Gordon's amazing play on your laptop on youtube, pause the video at the 0.1 sec shotclock mark, then use comma key (rewind), period key (forward) frame by frame.

You could see the frame that definitively shows ball off his fingers is the first frame to go 0.0

Go back and fort between that frame and the one prior. Incredible stuff.

This is the buzzer beater of all buzzer beaters.

Won the game by the slightest margin humanly possible.

PS. You can use the same technique to pause on Sharon Stone's leg cross scene from Basic Instinct (1992)

 

I wasn't paying attention till your last sentence

 

Great game between Detroit and NY. Hart got away with two critical fouls: one time when he hacked Duren, causing a turnover. (NY ended up with a 3-pointer.) And the last shot of the game. It's stupid that in that situation, the coaches can't challenge a missed foul.

 

The league wanted NYC to win.